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Category: sustainabletimes

Stuck in a traffic jam? Choking on car fumes? Then take the next exit and head south past the equator to the city of Curitiba, Brazil, where you can board a bus to a public transit utopia. By the year 2025, two-thirds of the planet’s population will live in cities, according to the United Nations. […]

Small, independent farmers are an endangered species. So some consumers are putting their money where their mouths are, by sharing the bounty – and the risk. It was a heart-warming sight, even for a hot summer’s day. Moved by the plight of drought-stricken western farmers forced to sell cattle because they couldn’t afford to feed […]

Many people who make the shirts on our backs don’t make enough to put food on their tables. So some customers are starting to look behind the labels. The hip young models stare out seductively from the magazine ads, clad in the latest fashions from Gap or Club Monaco. But behind the glossy photos, forgotten […]

On this private patch of island in Africa, the view from the large green canvas tent is breathtaking: a lake of deep blue water framed by lushly flowered trees and swaying sorghum crops. Birds with names like Bou Bous, Robin-Chats and Weavers dart about, each speaking its own language. Butterflies dance in the air, cats […]

Nova Scotia’s coastal communities have been hit hard economically by the ecological collapse of the fisheries. But an eco-tourism ‘water trail’ is helping to preserve nature while creating jobs. On this typical summer morning, the coves and inlets along Nova Scotia’s South Shore lie concealed beneath a blanket of fog. In the peaceful isolation found […]

A meditating eco-logger in Nova Scotia sees the forest for the trees Jim Drescher is not your typical lumberjack. Sure, he cuts down trees, mills the logs and sells them. Yeah, he’s got big strong hands, wears tough denims, checkered shirts and steel-toed boots. But unlike most loggers, Drescher spends a lot of his time […]

International bigtop phenomenon Cirque du Soleil of Montreal teaches the art of the circus – and of life – to street kids in Chile. At one time or another, most children think about running away from home. One classic destination for these wayward dreams is the circus. The more adventurous may even fantasize about finding […]

If you give the world’s poor legal title to their land – no mater how humble or how acquired – you could give them the collateral they need to start businesses and create jobs. “I hate telling you this, but I don’t think your [foreign] aid really matters much,” influential Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto […]

An unlikely partnership between Native communities in Saskatchewan and Nicaragua grows hope through the sustainable logging of indigenous forests. Native communities in snowy Saskatchewan and tropical Nicaragua may seem worlds apart, but Chief Richard Gladue of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council believes these worlds have much in common. Gladue goes so far as to call […]

How can the international community help Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, recover from its latest natural disasters? Cuvette is the word Ghislain Rivard uses to describe the scene in May after floodwaters coursed down mountains from all directions into a valley in southeast Haiti, drowning 1,600 inhabitants of Mapou. The […]